Computing device users are increasingly accustomed to generating, receiving and sending many types of electronic content items (which may be referred to as “content items”), such as documents of different types, photographs, videos, images, and so forth according to different formats. In particular, electronic messaging services (which may be referred to as “messaging services”) have made it simple and fast for users to send both content items and text-based communications in real time among each other, which far greater convenience than pursuing similar interactions via electronic mail. As a result, content items have been observed to be far more likely to “go viral” via messaging services, resulting in large numbers of repeated transmissions of content items among users. Since these content items are often media items (such as, but not limited to, videos and images), substantial amounts of resources are consumed by the repeated transmissions of “viral” content items, including multiple transmissions of content items to and/or from individual users. The circulation of such items, and other redundant transmissions of attachments among various messaging service user bases, can result in undesired increases in device power demands, device storage space demands, and data communication network bandwidth usage (including, for example, via metered data communication networks).
In a typical electronic messaging setting, a user can identify an electronic content item to be sent to other users and/or groups of users as a message attachment (which may be referred to as an “attachment”). This often results in the attachment being transmitted to, and stored by, the recipients' end-user computing devices. Current messaging services will transmit attachments to and/or from end-user computing devices with little or no reference to the redundancy of that attachment within a messaging service. There is a need for methods and systems for allowing the service and/or users to more selectively receive relevant content items so that a user may reduce the time-consuming and inefficient process of receiving, storing, and disposing of redundant content items.